Swaminathan earned this soubriquet following the groundbreaking work he did as a plant geneticist in the 1960s — work that led to the development of hybridwheat seeds capable of producing yields three times higher than was previously possible.

This was nothing less than a gift of life for his countrymen who, in the aftermath of WWII, found themselves unable to grow enough food to feed their burgeoning population, and so had to live a "ship-to-mouth" existence, subsisting on food grains imported from the US.

At this point in his career Swaminathan could have settled for a comfortable academic life in the US. Instead he chose to return to India. As he put it in 1999 to TIME magazine, "I asked myself, why did I study genetics? It was to produce enough food in India. So I came back." ...

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